That prompted the desperate press release by a rival research outfit...
Imagine how many nuclear fusion researchers would lose their jobs if they ever DID achieve a working reactor...
70 seconds after 60 years of ZETA research is amazing. We might make 5 minutes by 2020 at this rate.
You are an optimist!
"First plasma was originally scheduled for 2018 with the start of deuterium-tritium operation set for 2026. However, in July 2010 the Iter Council agreed a new schedule under which first plasma is slated for November 2019, with deuterium-tritium operation starting in March 2027."
Translation: "We've had a great idea! With careful thought, we can keep our research funding going a little longer. All we have to do is add a few months now and again. "
Or you can go straight to the source at
Well, research that will last /at least/ 20 years. Nothing like an open-ended research project to generate (pun intended) continuous funds. I wonder how they came up with 20 years in the first place? Why not 15 or 25?
On the other hand itskind of like plasma envy. My plasma is bigger or longer lasting than your plasma. Its a shame they cannot allbe together and come up withsomething. The real killer here though seems to be extracting theenergy in some efficient way. Iam reminded of that film,The core with its Unobtainium. grin Brian
Generating and *containing* the plasma is the important first step - and keeping it going continuously is the next. After that you feed in the deuterium and tritium and get fusion (you hope)
Feeding in the fuel and extracting the energy are not going to be easy on this small scale. The only working fusion reactors tend to be a million miles in size, give or take.
What difference would them "all being together" make?
Or indeed at all.
I first remember reading about ZETA in the 1960s ... and back then, they said it wouldn't be long ...
No.
That's the very very easy bit.
The real difficulty is keeping a sun the size of a hula hoop, but considerably hotter, in one place. 70 seconds is a bloody miracle. .
I my engineering time I have dealt with things that just came along and happened, and things that we tried to make happen and couldn't. Theres no real way to ell. Transistors just came along. Fromn cats whisker diodes to germanium was but a short step, then silicon and suddenly we could make circuits automagically at huge complexity and very low prices. It was a revolution no one expected.
If Leonardo da Vinci had had - say a Rotax engine, he would have had an aeroplane flying in 10 years.We waited 400 years for a decent engine.
If we had had a decent battery, we would have had electric cars pre wwI and never used an IC engine at all. We are still waiting for decent batteries and looks like there never will be a decent battery that will make electric cars simple and cheap.
Nuclear fission? bang some refined uranium together in a big pot of water and drive a steam engine. Simples.
Nuclear fusion...heat a deuterium plasma to a few million degrees and keep it in a jar. Oh dear. What jar would that be?
Its Leonardo waiting for that Rotax engine. It might not turn up for 400 years. Or it might turn up tomorrow.
Nuclear fusion has been "just around the corner" since I started reading science books in the 1970s.
Te point is, we don't have a suitable container.
We don't even know what a suitable container would consists of.
So we have no way of knowing when one might turn up.
Meantime, there's lots of worthwhile research to be done. Its like building gliders that fly for 70 seconds, to get to understand aeronautics, without actually having one that will rise off flat ground without a tow.
And hoping that a lightweight engine turns up.
I've always wondered if there is a way to use nuclear power to generate electricity directly ? Rather than all that faff with steam |(and the associated inefficiencies).
I can't find it now, but I've seen a cartoon with a caveman rubbing sticks together over kindling, while another says "Fire, it's always just around the corner!"
yeah. Move plasma through a magnetic fed and it generates leccy.
Or you can use another working fluid than water in say a gas turbine, followed by a steam turbine
It's amazing how much engineering just happens to work because of a peculiar quirk in physics or chemistry, and that's the only way we have to do....whatever...
To be fair, I suspect a lot of that is not scientists, but journalists ...
MHD
Fascinating, but not what I envisaged.
I had some (very !!!!) vague idea of maybe two radioactive substances somehow joined to deliver a current across the assembly.
Sort of a nuclear equivalent to a chemical battery.
I have no idea how or if it would be possible.
Given the state of knowledge of sub atomic physics, is anyone qualified to say it *isn't* possible ?
Although possibility and practicality are not necessarily connected ...
(Makes note to self to ensure Royal Institute lectures are recorded :) )
Mmm. I'll think about that one.
There are many electrical fields emanating from the sun, how are they generated?
MHD I think. Not sure.
The Sun is a gigantic mass of swirling charged particles - RF agogo.
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